Ecuador:
The Huaorani people of Yasuni Park are attacked by timber
and oil groups
To the south of the
Yasuni National Park (see WRM Bulletin No. 96), an unequal
battle is being fought. Spears against shotguns.
The Yasuni National
Park covers an area of 982,000 hectares. It is located
in Huaorani territory and is part of the Intangible Zone
where peoples of the Tagaeri and Taromenane ethnic groups
live in voluntary isolation.
Although extractive
activities such as oil exploitation and logging are prohibited
in the Intangible Zone, in fact an intensive and violent
forestry exploitation has been taking place in full view
and with the complicity of the police, environmental officers
and the military. Trucks loaded with timber travel across
river-ways and overland with impunity and even cross the
military camp.
Five
oil blocks have been imposed on Huaorani territory and the
Petrobras Company has received a license for forestry exploitation.
Oil activities require routes of access whereby logging
companies enter the territories of Indigenous Peoples in
Voluntary Isolation. The prolonged pressure they are undergoing
as a result of logging, oil and tourism, have caused genocide
and the disappearance of several of these groups in repeatedly
violent episodes such as the murder in May 2003 of some
20 women and children of the Tagaeri people in Tigüino.
Those responsible for these murders were never identified.
The logging
companies organized in the Association of Timber Industrialists
(Asociación de Industriales de la Madera - AIMA),
Corporation of Sustainable Forestry Management (Corporación
de Manejo Forestal Sustentable - COMAFORS) and the Corporation
of Forestry and Logging Development (Corporación
de Desarrollo Forestal y Maderero - CORMADERA) gave out
a public communiqué at the beginning of this month
whereby they attempted to delimit the connection between
logging exploitation and violation of the human rights of
the Tagaeri and Taromenane groups. At the same time they
demand greater sinecures for their activities from the State,
such as two million hectares for plantations, economic resources
and foreign debt swapping for their forestry exploitation
activities and monoculture tree plantations, deregulation
of their activities and unlinking from the Ministry of the
Environment control, the handing over of forestry monitoring
to private bodies related with their interests and the promotion
of systems of anticipated sale of timber – all this supposedly
related with “sustainable forest development.”
For their part, the
Huaorani have decided to take over control of their ancestral
territory. In an assembly held in the Nemopari community
at the end of last year, they resolved to prevent exploitation
of natural resources. The Huaorani conclave was held in
the presence of 60 wise elders. According to Vicente Enomenga,
president of the Huaorani organization, they recommended
to the Government Council, the Organization of Huaorani
Nationality of the Ecuadorian Amazon (Onhae), that it
should take care of their environment and their life.
The Huaorani defined
that entry of foreigners to their territory is forbidden,
including loggers from Ecuador and Colombia. The Vice-President
of the Government Council warned that the indigenous inhabitants
were not responsible for foreigners' security.
It is in this context
that on 12 April, two loggers from the Cononaco sector
in the Province of Orellana were speared and on 27 April,
to the south of this Province, on the border with Pastaza,
sources of the Vicariate of Orellana and a Huaorani leader
reported the murder of various members of the Taromenane
community – denouncing a figure of 30 victims.
However now, according
to complaints by the Ecuadorian organization Acción
Ecológica, a complicit silence has taken over the
intangible zone. The spears that were found reveal that
something very serious happened although an attempt is
being made to ignore the presence of armed people in the
area. Those who sounded the alarm and those who have information
are gagged by fear. No one dares to speak against the
logging companies: their violence and the economic power
they wield seem stronger than justice and rights.
Acción Ecológica
is demanding that a serious and impartial investigation
be made of the facts and that protective measures are
taken. Such measures must start by establishing a clear
policy of respect for protected areas and the indigenous
peoples that inhabit them and the halting of any type
of large scale extractive activities in these locations.
The indigenous peoples
living in voluntary isolation in the Amazon basin represent
true cultural treasures, showing their will to maintain
their ethnic identity and protecting –through their culture-
wide regions of tropical rainforest. To respect them also
implies the protection of forests.
Article
based on information from: “ Ecuador:
Denuncian genocidio de indígenas
Taromenane, en aislamiento, por madereros ”, 12 May
2006, Ivonne Ramos, Acción Ecológica ,
cbosques@accionecologica.org,
foresta@accionecologica.org
; “Conflicto en selva deja dos muertos de los Taromenane”,
El Universo, and “ La violencia crece en el Yasuní”
El Comercio , both news articles dated 29 April 2006, at
http://www.llacta.org/notic/2006/not0429a.htm
; “ Los sabios huao, a favor de la selva”, El Comercio,
1/11/2006, http://www.saveamericasforests.org/
Yasuni/News/Articles/2006/1-11-06%20El%20Comercio%20The%20Wise%20Huaorani,%20
In%20Favor%20Of%20The%20Forest.htm
|
